


To Set Stone Aflame

by eurosthewanderer



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Angst, BAMF Bilbo Baggins, Bilbo and Fíli tag subject to change, Child Death, F/M, Illegitimacy, M/M, Physical Disability, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:01:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24704248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eurosthewanderer/pseuds/eurosthewanderer
Summary: By March 25th, 3002 of the Third Age the Shire has been scourged, Rohan is still burning, Erebor lies abandoned, Rivendale rests in a valley of ash, not a tree is left standing in Lothlorien, Gondor has been decimated, and the Line of Durin has been broken.Olenna Baggins and Tauriel of Erebor die in the crater of Mount Doom, taking Sauron and The One with them.Unfortunately, death is not permanent.
Relationships: Alatar/Pallando (Tolkien), Bilbo Baggins/Fíli, Dwalin/Thorin Oakenshield, Kíli/Tauriel, Past Bilbo Baggins/Fíli
Comments: 34
Kudos: 128





	1. Into the West

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [She Walks in Shadow](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16547237) by [ISeeFire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ISeeFire/pseuds/ISeeFire). 
  * Inspired by [if this is to end in fire](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3132197) by [asthiathien](https://archiveofourown.org/users/asthiathien/pseuds/asthiathien). 



> There’s a reason my username is “eurosthewanderer.” Like geez I can’t stay in one fandom for more than a few months. Well here’s this monster.  
> “She Walks in Shadow” by ISeeFire and “if this is to end in fire” by asthiathein are AMAZING. Utterly amazing and I’d highly recommend you read them and send the author’s some love because they absolutely deserve it. 
> 
> Beta'd by me so if you see something please say something!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Death by lava was more painful than she had ever imagined.

Olenna I Ringbearer was dressed in what could be described as rags. The old hobbit limped through the ash and filth of Morder on her blooded, bandaged feet. Her left arm throbbed a steady, ever present beat of pain. It was tucked against her side, bandaged and splinted having been snapped in that dratted spider’s mouth. She’d wondered what would happen if some orc had caught her unawares trapped in Shelob’s webs. 

_It would be dead. I would have killed it._

Even if it had escaped her blade, the tall, sharp-eyed, hooded figure walking beside her would have butchered it. Tauriel was little better attired than her Queen with her armor scratched and her pants patched at the hips and calves. The two women moved ever forward, eyes fixed on the mountain looming ahead from beneath their black cloaks.

“It’s too empty,” Tauriel stated, _rather helpfully_. 

“You think he’s packed an entire army into that mountain?” Olenna grunted back. The rings around her neck purred. The One sounds had once been so light, so gentle but like a small stream that had carved it’s way deep into stone it’s voice had turned into a roar, nearly flooding her mind with it’s demands. Unrol-Eron-da-Nerroth on the other hand crackled like a merry flame in a forge with the sound of hammers shaping swords transformed into murmurs of defiance. She sang the songs of a thousand generations of miners but her harsh Khuzdul did little to drown out The One. Olenna still appreciated the effort. 

“The Vára fraunana could find a way.” Tauriel replied. Olenna did not glance at her sister but eyed the jagged rocks in front of them. Her feet throbbed pitifully. Sauron must have shaped this landscape with the sole intent of torturing hobbits. The sharp twisting climb ahead would take them through boulders that would block them from Sauron’s gaze should his eye turn towards them. Mahal knew very well that they couldn’t afford to be caught. 

Well, they could. But then they’d have to cut their way to the top of that blasted mountain. 

“It’ll be the Úlairi,” Olenna said. “He’ll have all five waiting.”

“He can’t.” Tauriel responded. “He’s sent Khamûl to Minas Morgul.”

“Well, the easterling won’t have to go far,” Olenna said flatly. “Maybe a quarter of an hour by fellbeast.”

“He’d be little better than a fool if he rode one against Eldarion or Thorin,” Tauriel shook her head back and forth, voice light with amusement. Even from beneath her cloak Olenna could make out the beads always weaved into her hairline like a crown. _Gwahil-Akvel akh id-Quin, Lady of Erebor, Wife of Kíli of the Line of Durin, General of the Khazâd, Dûrgrimst Vrenshrrgn_ No matter how many years had passed since her beads had been lost, the sight never failed to make her heart throb with grief. 

_Nope. Not going there._

Olenna’s feet burned as she strode and scrambled her way up the jagged rocks, Tauriel striding easily ahead of her on her silent, elven feet. Olenna glared at her sister while the elf looked out over the mountain and dead plains surrounding them. 

_They were covered in blood. Eldarion, Thorin Stonehelm, Haldir, Tauriel, little Dain, Brodda and Brahha laid gutted on the ash; limbs hacked off, red blood staining their armor and dead eyes fixed on her. Banners-Rohirrim, Gondorian, Lothlorian, Balchothi, Erebor, Rivendale, Umbar, Dorwinian-had been painted with the blazi ng red eye of Sauron._

“Shut up,” Olenna snarled at The One. Tauriel said nothing, having grown used to her Queen’s mutterings over the forty-odd years since her husband had been slain.

“It’s not quite empty,” Tauriel said. “There are Uruk-hai not 20 kilometers away.”

“Coming this way?” Olenna replied, biting back a curse as she slipped and jarred her left arm. The pain went all the way up to her shoulder because that _fucking bitch spider_ had pumped her with poison. Olenna could have sworn her screams had been heard all the way in what was left of the Shire when Tauriel had reset it and drained the poison. 

“No,” Tauriel said with a shrug. “Do you need me to carry you?”

“Bastard,” Olenna replied. 

Tauriel carried Olenna up the rest of the mountain on her back, smirking the entire way. 

By Olenna’s count of hours; it was nearly the middle of the night when the sisters arrived at the top of the mountain. The sky was still as dark as it had been that morning. She could sense the Nazgul long before she saw them, the necromancy that anchored them to the earth chilling the air. Olenna had fought them- _had killed them-_ enough times to have developed a healthy tolerance to Ringwraith induced paralysing fear. 

Carefully, Olenna drew one of Fíli’s blades from her back with practiced ease and spun it in her palm. Next to her, Tauriel notched an arrow into her stolen orcish bow and adjusted her stance so that she was just a pace behind her Queen. Olenna sucked a sharp breath in through her teeth and tasted Mordor’s foulness on her tongue. 

“Have I told you I love you recently?” She twitched her nose and glanced back at her sister.

“I will not be fighting Stonehelm for your honor.” Tauriel replied. Olenna bit her tongue to muffle her groan as she lifted her left arm and pulled The One and Unrol-Eron-da-Nerroth from around her neck. She wrapped the chain between her fingers and felt the sharp tug of her tendons as her torn muscle screeched in agony.

“I’m sorry old friend,” Olenna murmured to Unrol-Eron-da-Nerroth. The song of the forge rose in her ears, battling against The One’s shrieks. She was proud of her. 

_Unrol-Eron-da-Nerroth was proud to die at her side._

“Thank you,” Olenna whispered. “Thank you.”

“I love you too.” Tauriel told the Hobbit. Olenna nodded her head and gave the elf one last smile. 

“For the Shire!” She yelled as she rushed into the mountain.

“ _Gurth enin goth!_ ” Tauriel’s terrifying howl rose behind her. 

Four of the five remaining Úlairi were waiting for them, blades drawn. 

“Missed me?” Olenna snarled as she faced the first of the Ringwraiths. It feinted a downward strike before trying to bisect her. She stepped easily aside and redirected the next blow. Tauriel’s arrow buried into the nazgul’s shoulder allowing her to dart in and slice the wraith across the leg. 

She rolled beneath a whistling blade as another of the nazgul flew at her. The hobbit hacked and jumped, her husband’s blade flashing in her one good hand. The first nazgul fell in step with his companion, kindly allowing Olenna to sink her sword into his hip, bringing him down with an ear shattering screech. Olenna dove to avoid a sharp blade, twisting to behead the felled wraith and turned to his companion. Tauriel’s heel slammed into the wraith’s chest as the elf vaulted off the nazgul to kick another across the face. Olenna rushed into the frey, blocking a blow aimed for Tauriel’s belly. Her right arm and shoulder screamed from the force of the blow, making her grit her teeth and disengage the nazgul. 

_The pain is nothing._ _Has to be nothing_. 

Olenna and Tauriel danced between the wraiths, sword, knives and arrows flying against their cloaked opponents. She could hear The One screaming for it’s master in her head; she could feel it pressing at the edges of her mind, tearing bloody gashes into her psyche yet she fought. 

_Eldarion’s head being struck from his body._

Olenna sliced a nazgul across the shoulder as it lunged toward Tauriel’s side. 

_The wet crunch of bone as a troll’s club hits Haldir’s chest._

She leapt off her aching feet to catch another wraith under his arm and tucked as if she was diving into a roll, only to turn midair and catch him on the back of it’s thigh. 

_Brahha standing over the corpse of his brother, double bladed glaive swinging in a deadly arch as Khâmul flew over his head._

“Shut up!” Olenna bellowed. Tauriel buried her last knife into the wraith in front of Olenna. The she-elf drew Orcrest from her side, the blade little more than a blue blur in her hands. 

_Stonehelm in the jaws of a fellbeast, being shaken about like a doll._

A metal fist smashed Olenna’s nose, sending her stumbling back, disorientated from the blow. Then the nazgul kicked her left arm. 

_Little Dain’s arm being torn off just above the elbow._

Olenna screamed, vision going white from the sheer agony. Bile rose in her throat as she doubled over herself, cradling the arm to her body. When she looked up she saw Orcrest’s blade sticking out of the wraith’s chest. The dark glint of a blade being swung at Olenna’s sister, going too fast, _too fast, too fast_ and Olenna screamed. 

_Tauriel screaming as her body disappeared into the lava._

Not a bad idea. Not a bad idea at all. 

Olenna pushed herself to her feet, clumsily ducked a knife, took one last look at her sister as she fought with all the grace of her kin, blood dripping from her shoulder wound and threw herself over the edge. 

_It’s done. It’s over,_ Olenna thought as she fell to her doom. 

Death by lava was more painful than she had ever imagined.

* * *

Ms. Olenna Baggins of Bag End woke screaming with the ashen taste of Mordor still in her lungs. Her eyes stared blankly ahead, not seeing the simple, tasteful ceiling above her head nor light of a sunrise trickling out from between the cracks of her pretty lavender curtains. She thrashed around on her bed, trying desperately to untangle herself from the sweat soaked sheets she had not slept in for nearly seventy years. Her hands groped around for a knife that was _not there, not there, not there._ Then, she pawed at her neck for two rings that were not _there._ She could feel the bumps of scar tissue from The One pulling it’s chain into her flesh but not the chain itself.

 _Where are you?_ She thought. 

Olenna couldn’t hear either of them. She froze and searched her mind, looking for where The One had hidden itself. Unrol-Eron-da-Nerroth was gone. Another of her friends was dead. 

She rolled onto her side and vomited the contents of her stomach up onto her pillow until there was nothing left in her belly but bile. She stared at the vaguely peach colored, half digested food in front of her. 

“Is that _kale_ ?” The hobbit asked no one in particular. It indeed was kale. Olenna wrinkled her nose and rolled out of a _too soft, too small, too violet, utterly furless bed._

There was a doily draped over the headboard. 

She stared at that pretty, white, lacy little treasure for longer than she’d ever admit. She didn’t recognize it. 

Oh, she knew very well it had been rather important to her nearly seventy years ago, before she’d gone out her door with a wizard and an unlucky number of dwarrow. She didn’t remember if she’d even seen it after she’d returned, packed up essentials and trotted out of the Shire for good.

 _Fifty years not “for good.”_ Olenna corrected herself. Except it was “for good” in most ways. She hadn’t been Olenna Baggins when she returned.

Olenna stumbled out of her bedroom and slammed the door behind her. She eyed the neat, clean, pale, wooden walls with shock. 

“ _Mairon,”_ Olenna hissed. “Jiak liwo zorr lat!” 

Olenna reached out and trailed her fingers along one of the beams, expecting it to burn her skin like all of the Maia’s illusions did. She groped at her neck yet again to again find it bare of _her rings._ A flash of rage overwhelmed her mind. She clawed at her collar bone and nightdress, frantically looking for The One. 

“Where is it?” She shrieked and made to rush off before she realized she had no idea where to look. Neither The One nor Unrol-Eron-da-Nerroth had ever been inside _this_ home. They’d never been inside Bag End proper. _This Bag End_ not the orc hole it would become. Olenna bent over and put her hands on her knees trying to calm her swirling mind. 

_Where is this?_

She’d died. Olenna knew she had died. 

Pallando had told her that the Halls of Mandos had been built into a mountain range like dwarven cities. He said they overlooked both a great valley and the Encircling Sea and were already larger than any palace conceived on Middle Earth when he had left Valinor. Now they had to be a hundred times that size. 

Olenna wondered if there had been enough room for the dead when the war reached its peak and Minas Tirith had burned. She wondered if there were too many spirits wandering the halls of the dead for Eowyn and Faramir to find each other. Or Arwen and Aragorn. She wondered if she’d find her family just outside her door, watching the sunrise. 

Olenna wondered if her daughters had grown in death. 

_Thyravenna was holding one of the toddlers when they found them. Their bones..._

No. 

Olenna thought she was going to throw up again. 

They would not be here in Bag End. _Aüle_ , they’d known barely anything of the Shire. She’d never bother to teach them after all. Other than a few gardening tricks, of course, but those girls had been Ereborian dwarves through and through. 

The hobbit slapped her hand over her mouth and forced herself to breathe through her nose. She was not going to be sick. She was not. Olenna had already regurgitated enough of whatever was in her stomach, _thank you very much._

She promptly vomited all over the floor.

The hobbit stumbled her way to where she remembered the bathroom was, only to realise it was on the opposite side of the hall. She bolted into it, not bothering to close the door behind her and buried her head in the toilet for a good half an hour. 

Once her mouth tasted unbelievably foul and there really was nothing left in her guts, Olenna went to the sink and splashed water on her face, cleaning pale, pampered, unblemished skin with soft hands. Olenna looked down at those hands. Her nails were beautifully filed with undamaged cuticles. She flexed her fingers in and out, simply to see how they moved with undamaged joints and unbroken bones. Then she looked up into the mirror.

 _Oh, bother,_ Olenna grumbled. She could almost hear The One cackling at her for that little saying.

Her hair was tied up into forty or so rag curls. 

Ms. Olenna Baggins of Bag End had been considered a very pretty girl with a healthy figure that had grown a bit too tall when she reached woman hood. Suitors had still come. Most said she was a youthful looking woman with striking eyes but that mattered little in the Shire. She had a crooked mouth and noticeably small breasts, even when she was at her plumpest. Most importantly, when not cropped close to her scalp, Olenna’s hair was wavy, dull and frizzy, not the full, tightly wound and glossy curls of her Baggins kin. 

_Took hair,_ everyone had said. _For a mad Took girl._

They’d apparently added that last little bit after she’d taken off with a bunch of dwarves. Lobelia Sackville-Baggins had told her so when she’d come rushing into the Shire with an army at her back only to find her most respectable nemesis leading _one hell of a revolt._

Olenna began yanking the ribbons from her hair with a snarl upon her face. She couldn’t even imagine exactly why torturing her scalp had been _this_ important. 

_All to get them to stop calling her a Took. How ridiculous. If I’d acted more like a Took then I wouldn’t have had half as much trouble on that dratted quest as I did. By Melkor’s arse, I couldn’t even ride a pony. How humiliating._

As Olenna unwound the ribbons from her hair her eyes fell upon the scars on her forearms. 

_“Forth Eorlingas!”_

_Eowyn charged at the head of her cavalry with Olenna sitting in front of her on Windfola. She was shooting, each arrow flying from her bow right into the chinks of Saruman’s beasts’ armor. The Rohirrim rushed the Uruk-Hai with all the rage of a people driven from their homeland. It made Olenna’s skin prickle and her hair stand on end._

_They broke the Uruk-Hai shield wall, Windfola trampling everything in her wake. Eowyn’s spears punctured shield and chestplate while Olenna’s arrow’s pierced throat after throat. Then her quiver ran empty and she pulled her sword from her hip. She swung wildly, dwarven steel hacking away at anything in Windfola’s path._

_She never saw the archer, too busy looking at the armored troll they were charging toward._

_“The throat!” She screamed at Eowyn. Then an arrow struck Windfola in the throat. The beautiful black mare screamed. Olenna flew off her back, tumbling over the horse’s head and tucking into a shoulder roll._

_As she got up she saw a spear heading right for her belly. Olenna cut it in half and then took the liberty of removing it’s owner’s leg._

_A horse sprung over her head, it’s rider’s chest riddled with arrows._

_Olenna leapt forward, hacking away at her opponents, drawing closer and closer to the troll. A flash of a golden helm at her side told her that the Queen of Rohan was doing the same thing._

_Ahead of the two women were the half naked, painted forms of Sauruman’s berserkers. Olenna raced toward them, pulling a throwing axe from her hip and crossing it over the back of her single sided sword to block the first downward strike aimed at her._

Why do the mad things always have to go for my head?, _Olenna wondered._

_She turned the axe, using it to push the long blade away from her body as her sword sliced open the berserker’s belly. It did not go down but struck at her again, the tip of it’s massive blade cutting through her leather archer’s bracer and slicing open her wrist. Olenna bit back a yelp and hacked off its arm. Eowyn was battling one of the berserkers, blind to the footsoldier at her back. Olenna threw her axe into the Uruk-Hai’s hip. In the seconds she had turned away, the creature in front of her swung it’s knife, aiming for her throat. She blocked but it caught her across just above her elbow. Olenna relieved it of its head._

_The troll ahead of her roared, straining against it’s chains..._

Absolutely not. 

Olenna unwound the last of the ribbons from her hair and stared at herself in the mirror. Her curls bounced around her face and shoulders, hanging over the shoulders of her nightdress.

 _I look like a girl playing at being a woman_. 

_No, that’s not right._

_I look like a_ hobbit woman _not a_ dwarrowdam _._

Olenna untied her nightgown’s collar and pulled it from her shoulders. 

Her thighs were as skinny as they had been before she’d first run out of her door after a group of dwarves. Her arms were as thin as they had been before she’d fought during the Siege of Dol Guldur. Her belly was as plump as it had been before she’d apprenticed to Dwalin. Her hips and breasts were as smooth and firm as they had been before she’d become a mother. Her neck was pale and her right ear intact. Her calves were not much better than bone. She couldn’t even see a hint of her ribs and Yavanna knew she’d been able to count half of them for the last five years. This body wouldn’t be able to throw an axe much less swing a sword. She pinched the side of her bicep and grimaced, feeling none of her muscle and the fat that had coated it. She did the same to her stomach. She spent the last fifty, sixty years as a physically strong, stocky woman not _this_. 

_I doubt I can run a mile and even a hobbit child can bloody do that._

Layered across this foreign, long lost body of hers was the scars and tattoos of one hundred and nineteen years of a well-lived, hard fought, merciless life. 

_Sixty-nine years. I spent the first fifty in this careless, disgusting isolation._

Olenna poked each and every one of her scars, testing to see if any kind of feeling remained. 

When she reached the massive, gnarled scar that curled on from just beneath her right ribs to her bellybutton she flinched in pain. The scar tissue had always troubled her and it seemed unwilling to stop. 

_Fucking Gothmog,_ Olenna thought and took a moment to curse the Orc with a painful death.

A dragon wound its way down from her left hip to her knee, writhing in agony, just as Glostir had died, his corpse crushing what was left of Osgiliath. 

_I’ll have to deal with that dilann grjoul_ _sooner rather than later._

Two lines of ruins were scrawled on each side of her collar bone, declaring her two Masteries. Her ribs were lined with the stories of her victories and her losses. On her sternum sat a compass with the symbol of Durin’s house in it’s center. The same mark had been tattooed twice onto her left forearm. Her sternum was bare. She touched the skin where a second dragon had sat, filled with ruins and fought the urge to cry. The simple line of ruins that had sat beneath it still remained. Olenna fought the urge to punch something. 

The six tattoos between her hips had also disappeared. 

_No, I will not cry. I have already wept too often for my losses._

She looked at herself in the mirror and twitched her nose. 

“Well,” Olenna Baggins said. “Nothing a bath and a cup of tea won’t fix.”

* * *

“No! Run! Tauriel,  _ ongra _ !”

Fíli, son of Vìli, Heir of Erebor, awoke to the sound of his younger brother’s shouts. He rolled over and grabbed him by his shoulders. 

“Kíli!” He shook him as hard as could. Kíli’s eyes flew open and he shoved him away with a snarl. Fíli doubled over on himself, winded and Kíli grabbed him him by the shoulders. His head connected with the baseboard as his little brother threw him onto his back. 

“Kí..” He sputtered out. Kíli punched him in the nose. Fíli’s mouth fell open, momentarily stunned. He threw his arms up over his face to block it. 

_ What in Mahal’s name?  _ Fíli wondered.  __

Fíli kneed his brother in the groin as a series of blows landed on his forearms, giving him an opening to sink his fist into Kíli’s stomach. He scrambled out from under Kíli and off the bed, putting distance between the two of them. Fíli crouched, ready to spring away but left his hands at his sides. He would not fight his brother. 

_ What’s happened? What’s happened?What’shappened? _

“Kíli?” He asked, his voice wavering. His brother was on his hands and knees on their bed, panting for breath. Kíli looked up at him with his wide black eyes and Fíli felt his heart drop in his chest. He walked right back over to his brother, ignoring his throbbing nose and clambering back into bed. Kíli flinched away from him, mouth hanging open. Fíli wrapped his arms around his brother and pulled him to his chest. Kíli went rigid beneath his hands for a moment, nearly making Fíli’s heart stop in his chest. Then he collapsed into Fíli, his larger frame shaking with sobs. 

“Shhh, shhh,” Fíli murmured and kissed his baby brother’s hair as Kíli tucked his head beneath Fíli’s chin. He used to do that when they were children and their Amad or irak’nadad had gone travelling with the caravans. “It’s alright. It was only a nightmare, Kì.”

Kíli’s fingers twisted in his shirt and he let out a helpless wail. 

“You were dead,” He sobbed. “You were dead and Olenna was screaming and Tauriel, Tauriel….”

“It was a dream, Kì,” Fíli assured him, thoroughly confused by his brothers mumbling. 

_ Olenna and Tauriel.  _ He made a note to remember those names.  _ Tauriel _ was not a dwarven name and Fíli would chew stone if  _ Olenna _ was the name of a woman in Ered Luin. It could be dwarven but  _ enna  _ was as uncommon a line-name as  _ ol _ . 

“You were dead,” He choked out. “You were dead and Olyra...Olyra…she’s a baby Fíli, she’s a baby.”

“Kíli,” Fíli pushed his brother away from his body to get a look at his face. “I’m alive. I’ve been alive for the last seventy-three years and I’m not going anywhere soon, alright Kì? It was just a nightmare.”

_ What have you done, Kì?  _ Fíli wondered, worry sparking in his gut. 

His brother took a deep, rattling breath and peered at him with angonized eyes. Fíli felt his throat clench. He looked Kíli over, studying his flushed, tearstained face, heaving chest and the hands clawing at his shoulders. 

Kíli was shaking.

Fíli put his hands over his brother’s and rubbed his thumbs over Kíli’s knuckles. 

“I’m right here, yes?”Fíli asked. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Kíli smiled weakly at him. It didn’t reach his eyes, something that worried Fíli more than his brother's tears. 

“It’s alright,” He said, lips pursed and brow knit together. “I’m right here. You’re safe.”

Kíli sobbed in his arms until there was a knock on their bedroom door. Fíli rubbed his little brother’s back gently and kissed his forehead. 

“I’m sorry,” Kíli muttered. “I’m so sorry.”

Fíli rubbed his brother’s back. The gesture only served to draw another cry from his brother’s throat. There was another knock on the door. 

“You won’t eat if you don’t hurry!” Their amad shouted. 

“Coming!” Fíli hollered back. 

He was not. Kíli would be humiliated if their Dwalin saw him like this and there was little chance of Fíli leaving him right now. 

“I’ll save you some food if you want Kì,” Fíli assured him. 

_ Amad would be the one saving them some food.  _

Kíli shook his head back and forth and pushed his brother away. He rubbed his face with his hands and shoved his hair back from his face. His eyes were red from crying. 

“I’ll head down.” He said. “Lemme wash my face.”

“Kíli,” Fíli began. “What’d you dream..?”

“I don’t remember,” Kíli responded far too quickly.

_ What in the name of Mahal?  _

Kíli lied, all right, just like Fíli lied or anybody else did, for that matter. Kíli did not lie to Fíli nor did he keep secrets from him. It had been that way since Fíli could remember. He couldn’t count the amount of times he’d gone to his brother or his brother had come to him with some confession of misdoing. 

_ You can tell me, Kì. You can tell me.  _

His brother would take that as an order and that wouldn’t help one bit. Fíli would just have to wait and let Kíli come to him. That was how it was when Kíli began to brood. It wasn’t a common occurrence but it did happen.

“Shit,” Kíli said. “Your nose.”

Fíli touched his face and felt hot blood dripping down into his mustache. He’d have to wash it before they set out on the road.

“I’ll go see Óin,” Fíli responded. “It’ll be alright.”

Kíli flinched and started to fidget with his shirt. Then he stopped, turned his palm up and stared at it, mouth hanging open. Fíli leaned over and snatched his brother’s hand. There was a circular burn scar just above his wrist that Fíli could swear he’d never seen before. Kíli pulled his hand away. 

“Kì,” Fíli asked. “Are you alright?”

“Yes,” His brother replied, staring up at him with wet eyes. “I’m alright now. I’m alright.”

They barely spoke as they dressed and rushed down to breakfast. Dìs, as Fíli had expected, had saved them some breakfast, keeping it out of Dwalin and Balin’s sticky fingers. Fíli almost walked into Kíli’s back when his brother froze in the doorway. Fíli put his hand on his brother’s lower back. 

“Kì,” He whispered.

_ He’ll tell me when he’s ready,  _ Fíli reminded himself.

Fíli  _ knew  _ his brother would. He  _ knew  _ but that didn’t mean he liked it. 

“Boys,” Dwalin said. “Get in here before your mother tosses your eggs.”

“We’re leaving for Erebor tomorrow, aren’t we?” Kíli asked. Fíli stared at the back of his brother’s head, mind whirling. 

_ I’ve got to take him with me to Óin. _

Slowly Kíli walked into the room. Fíli watched Balin’s eyebrows crawl to the top of his forehead and Dwalin sat up straight in his chair. Dìs let out a low his of displeasure. 

“What happened to your nose?” She asked. Their mother didn’t get up from her seat. Fíli saw her start to drum her fingers on the table. 

“What have you two been up to?” Dwalin grunted when Fíli and Kíli didn’t immediately answer. Fíli opened his mouth, intending to say that he’d fallen out of bed when Kíli spoke.

“It’s my fault.” He told the room. 

“He had a nightmare,” Fíli said. “He didn’t know where he was.”

“Come sit down,” Dìs ordered. The boys quickly obeyed, shuffling over to the table and taking their seats. It was eggs, bread and ham for breakfast, something Fíli couldn’t complain about. He took a bite watching the three older dwarves as they watched Kíli. He read concern in his Amad

“What did you see?” Balin asked Kíli.

“I don’t remember.” Kíli replied, his voice cracking. His hands were shaking. 

_ Olyra, Olenna and Tauriel. The first a baby, the second screaming and the third not running,  _ Fíli thought.  _ Who are you?  _

Fíli bit his tongue. He’d coax it out of Kíli in good time.  __

* * *

A cup of tea did not fix the problems of one Ms. Olenna Baggins of Bag End, Bagshot Row, Hobbiton, the Shire but it did sooth her nerves ever so slightly. She drank it on her porch, wearing nothing but her nightgown and a shawl. The sun was barely up but Bagshot Row already had a gardener or trader or two hurrying to work. Olenna smiled and waved at each one of them, cackling to herself at how their faces went red and they scuttled away. 

_Mad Baggins indeed._

It was good to see the Shire green, hale and healthy one last time. There was, afterall, little chance she’d ever be returning. 

When Olenna put her tea cup in the sink, humming a traveling song to herself, she noticed something on her kitchen table that she would swear _on her husband’s grave_ _hadn’t been there before._

Unrol-Eron-da-Nerroth sat on her kitchen table atop a book with her blue stone glinting eerily. Olenna smiled as broadly as she ever had, eyes growing wet at the sight. She rushed over and scooped the ring of power up into her hands. The crackle of fire and the hammers of a dwarven forge echoed in Olenna’s ears as Unrol-Eron-da-Nerroth sang in greeting.

“Hello old friend,” Olenna said. “I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you.”

Unrol-Eron-da-Nerroth hummed a joyous reply making Olenna sniffle. 

_None of that now._

Unrol-Eron-da-Nerroth hummed in amusement. Olenna quietly slipped her onto her middle finger and felt the metal warm as she shrunk to fit around the hobbit’s slim finger. She idly flipped the book open. It was a planner. It had been years since she’d had a planner. Olenna pulled out the pretty blue ribbon and looked down at the page. 

~~_April 17th, 2941: Dinner with Bolgers_ ~~

_April 18th, 2941: X_

_April 19th, 2941: X_

_April 20th, 2941: Market day_

_April 21st, 2941: Collect rents on west properties._

_April 22nd, 2941: Go see the bookseller._

_April 23nd, 2941: X_

_April 24th: Tea with F. and R. Bolger._

_April 25th: X_

_April 26th: X_

_April 27th: New Roses. Market Day._

_April 28th: X_

_April 29th: Plan walking holliday?_

Olenna slammed her planner shut, chest heaving in panic. There would be thirteen dwarves and a wizard in her house in nine days. Thorin, Kíli, Ori, Dwalin, Nori, Dori, Gloin- _Mahal, Gimli had looked like his father-_ Oin; _his body had been ripped to pieces._ Bifur, Bombur and Bofur all burn by Black Fire. Balin, _Lord of the_ _Dead and Dying_ , and Fíli.

 _My King, my husband, men andr torak. This is going to be fucking hell._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unrol-Eron-da-Nerroth - Stone of the Deep aka Durin’s ring  
> Vára Fraunana - Filthy coward in Quenya (Fraukank is coward in orcish which is derived from either Sindarian or Quenya so I modified it)  
> Úlairi - Ringwraiths in Quenya  
> Gwahil-Akvel akh id-Quin - Captain of the Queen's Guard in Khuzdul  
> Dûrgrimst Vrenshrrgn - Her Mastery was in combat (Direct translation: Dwarf Clan: Warriors)  
> Balchothi, Umbar, and Dorwinion - Lands of the Rhûn. Based on the names of the few named cultures/regions of the “Easterlings” that I could find on The One Wiki to Rule the All. Frankly, there is no way such a massive land mass doesn’t include peoples that would ally with the Gondorians et al. against Sauron.  
> Jiak liwo zorr lat - I will gut you in Orcish (I couldn’t find the translations in any other language. Also, I’m lazy.)  
> Dilann grjoul - Fat pig in Khuzdul.  
> Ongra- Please in Khuzdul.  
> Amad or Irak’nadad - Mother or Uncle in Khuzdul  
> Men andr torak - My soulmate


	2. Out Your Door Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She recognized the tune. It was from Belegost.

Ms. Olenna Baggins of Bag End was a thoroughly respectable hobbit lass and, as such, she did not own a set of pants nor a brassiere. Olenna scowled down at her bodices, kirtles and dresses, thoroughly frustrated. Her breasts had not thanked her for that particular, hazardous oversight the last time she went on the Quest. The damned things had gotten in the way of everything. Olenna wouldn’t have even been able to draw a bow properly. If Kíli had let her near his bow, _that_ would have been as unlikely as Sauron voluntarily leaving Middle Earth and begging Manwë’s forgiveness. 

_And convincing Celebrimbor to wed him._

Olenna slammed the drawer shut and swore in Sindarin before throwing on her nearest dress, snatching her purse and stomping out her door. 

The merchant she visited was a grey haired tailor from Tuckborough who handed her her new clothes with two raised eyebrows. Olenna ought to have known her name. 

_Mad Baggins_ . _Mad careless, improper, disrespectful Tookish, spinster Baggins,_ She thought as she handed over her money. _Put it on my grave._

It made her laugh. Unrol-Eron-da-Nerroth was not particularly amused by the little epithet. 

The seller was equally unamused, staring at her in something akin to concern. Olenna smiled, waved and skipped away. That skip quickly turned into a jog as she headed back to Bag End. Her side cramped up not a fifth of a mile from the market. 

“Yavanna damn it,” Olenna gasped out, stopped for a moment, heaving for breath and then took off again. By the time she got to Bag End she was soaked in sweat, red faced and utterly out of breath. At least those blasted ringlets were straightening out. 

_What a disaster._ Olenna thought. _I’ve got a battle in seven months, three trolls in less than three weeks and, oh yes, Azog._

She wanted to put an arrow through that particular bastard’s eye more than she wanted to decapitate Gothmog. 

_Another thing for the lists. Swords, bow, two dozen knives,_ She reminded herself. Hammers began to pound in her ears as Unrol-Eron-da-Nerroth whispered the secrets of a thousand years of dwarven metalworking to her bearer. Olenna had never so much as forged a sword yet she knew more tricks than even the most renowned of dwarven masters due to her old friend. Often enough, the ring was satiated with some toggling of powders or even a sketch of rough formula or a half scribbled idea of how to better an existing explosive. Then there were the times when Unrol-Eron-da-Nerroth howled to be in the hands of an actual smith. 

_Wait, can I even throw a knife?_

Olenna unlocked her front door and jogged into her kitchen, dropping her clothes on her sitting room table along the way. She yanked her kitchen knives out from their place on the shelf beneath her mother’s silver. They were perfectly sharp for cutting but woefully dull and woefully small for killing. Olenna grabbed the lot of them and headed back into her sitting room. There were two dozen maps and half a dozen books laid out on that table.

 _What was I up to?_ She wondered as she picked one up and flipped through it. Olenna had apparently been reading about Khazad-dûm . 

_“A History of the Dwarves of Moria from the Beginning of the Second Age to the Abandonment of the Mines_ .” She read outloud. “We’d know a bit about that wouldn’t we?” Unrol-Eron-da-Nerroth hummed in agreement. 

The Exile From Moria. It meant the _Exile from Moria_. 

She flipped to the back of the book only looking for one word: _Balrog._

_“A horrendous thing,” Radagast said. “It was shadow, greed, flame and rage made flesh by Morgoth’s foul magic during the First Age.”_

_“What happened?” Dori screamed at the Maiar. “What_ happened _?”_

_“Dori,” Balin said, raising his hands to his friend._

_“What happened?” Dori repeated, red faced and shaking with rage, turning on the Lord of Moria. “What did you do, Lord of Moria?! Where is my brother?!”_

It wasn’t there. 

Olenna slammed the book shut in disgust and Unrol-Eron-da-Nerroth let out a flare of fury that made Olenna’s jaw tense. So little was known about dwarves in the greater world as they kept much of their language, skill and wisdom close to their chests, knowing full well how others often saw Mahal’s children. Even less was known in the Shire, where even knowledge of Arnor, the very kingdom of men they still, in a way, relied on for protection, was limited. Olenna was well able to learn excellent legends and rather important details without being taught the very personal toll those legends took. So much of her education had been unsubstantial. 

_Perfect for a Shire dwelling, gentle-hobbit, though. And we were a dying kind before the end of it, weren’t we?_

Unrol-Eron-da-Nerroth grumbled, calling her a nostalgic, old fool.

Olenna had loved her books though. They were her prize possessions and had been her window to the world outside the Shire before she actually _entered_ that world. A pity it had taken her so long. 

She snatched a half scribbled on a bit of paper and pinned it to the wall across the room. Then Olenna picked up one of her kitchen knives and threw it at the paper with all the force her body could muster. It hit the center with a satisfying thwack. The second one landed right next to it and the third one after that. The fourth went to the upper right corner. The fifth the upper left and the sixth to the bottom left. 

Then she looked down at the carpeted floor in front of her. The hobbit tucked her head to her chest and rolled over her shoulder, hopping up with the innate sense of satisfaction of finding her resources intact.

_Excellent,_ Olenna thought. _Now to get some actual knives._

Fíli had taught her to throw knives after Erebor had been recaptured. There were evenings where, after a brief appearance for a feast, Fìli would go out to Nori’s dingy tavern, book a private room and get roaring drunk with the rest of the Company. By the time Kíli and Taurel were saying their good nights and stumbling into the one guest room with a properly sized bed, Fíli and Olenna could always be found be tucked in a corner throwing darts or knives. 

Olenna very rarely won. 

_“Perhaps something a little lighter this time,” Fíli teased, picking a bread knife up from the table. Olenna had felt her cheeks start to flush in anger. It would not do to be seen berating the King. “We wouldn’t want our burglar getting injured now would we?”_

_He was laughing at her._ Laughing at her. _That would not stand._

_Olenna grabbed his wrist instead of the bread knife and yanked out the knife he kept strapped in his vambrace. His yelp was rather satisfying._

_Olenna whipped around, threw and watched as the knife struck the target in the very center. She peered at Fíli from over her shoulder._

_“I win,” She responded smugly._

But Fíli had never, _not once_ , beaten her at conkers.

_I wonder if he will this time around._

The thought nearly knocked the wind out of Olenna’s lungs. She bent over and put one hand on the table, trying to steady herself. 

_No,_ She reminded herself. _There’s no time for this. There’s no time for this. Laketown is going to burn. Thorin is going to die._

_And then Dwalin, Bofur, Bifur….._

No. 

He wasn’t going to recognize her. _Mahal,_ he didn’t even know she existed. She couldn’t even call him _her friend,_ much less her husband.

_Her lover, her king._

It had been twenty-seven years since she’d seen him last. Twenty-seven years of a war that had not left an inch of Middle Earth unscarred by death.

 _Six wars, actually._ _At least that’s what the scribes are going to write. They’d all blurred together; one beginning just before a second ended and a third starting months after that. And the mountains bleeding and bleeding and bleeding; always bleeding dwarrow blood._

She wondered if Rohan would have still been burning even a decade after Sauron fell. It had seemed like it was never going to end. And Gondor. It would have been a hundred years before it gained back one fourth of the might it had had during the middle of the third age. 

_“Dagor Dagorath,”_ Olenna remembered Elladan murmuring a few days after Carn Dûm had fallen. 

_“It’s supposed to be one battle,” Olenna replied, passing the wine bottle to the elf._

_“That was Dagor Dagorath,” Elladan murmured, more to himself than Olenna. He looked down the opening with one eye before taking a deep swig._

_“Where are the fucking Valar then?” Olenna asked shrilly, cruelly. “I certainly don’t see them.”_

_“They’re laughing at us,” He replied darkly as Olenna took the wine back. “Laughing as we die.”_

_“Aye,” Gimli had said in greeting as he strode up to their campfire, already drunk. “Give that ‘ere.”_

_“Get your own,” Olenna responded but she handed the bottle over as he collapsed beside her. Gimli drained it and then made a choking sound. She hoped he remembered enough of his manners to not vomit the rather expensive wine. He swallowed it down._

_“I’ve had better orc brew,” Gimli said._

_“That is orc brew,” Elladan responded. The three of them managed a laugh, each looking down at his or her own feet._

_“With warg piss mixed in,” Olenna said._

_“You mean elf piss,” Gimli replied and tossed the bottle away from him. “Have you got any more of that?”_

_Olenna pulled a waterskin of actual orc ale out of her bag and took a swig of it. She handed it to Elladan, who took a drink, gagged and passed_ _the foul stuff_ _to Gimli. The dwarf drained the entire thing._

Gloin’s son had been married only six months before his husband had died. 

He’d made Olenna feel lucky. He still made Olenna feel lucky.

 _Eighteen years._ She’d had eighteen years with Fíli as his wife, another six as his lover and ten before that as his friend. Then he had died but the war had continued. Olenna had continued, unbroken and uncowed. 

_What would you have thought of the mess we made, Fíli?_ Olenna thought. _It was like the world went mad and I’ve gone mad right along with it._

Olenna wondered if Fíli would recognize _her_ if she was the one walking through his door in nine days time. 

_No,_ She realized. _He probably wouldn’t._

The thought made her sob.

* * *

_June TA 2940_

Pallando awoke in the middle of the afternoon, eyes blurry with sleep. He first rubbed his nose and then reached out to pat at the area beside him on his bed. He felt warm, naked skin beneath his palm there so he rolled toward it. The girl next to him was pretty with almond skin, freckles and long, thick hair colored a red with henna. Pallando tugged at her shoulder, urging her to roll on her back so he could see her face. 

_Fantastic tits,_ He thought but, as he searched his mind, he found he couldn’t remember who she was. The girl groaned and opened her marvelous, large, black eyes. 

“My liege,” She murmured in greeting. 

It had been twenty odd years since he’d been called that. He sat up, muscles aching from a good, hot night’s ride and shook himself. 

_Interesting,_ He thought. _Very interesting._

The maia stroked his beard and looked around at his bedroom. Rich, heavy, dark blue curtains hung at the other end of the room, covering a doorway. They were embroidered with more thread of gold, creating hedonistic scenes of writhing bodies and heavenly feasts with a thousand delicacies. They were familiar in a way.

_Ah yes. Nalo made them. Lovely fellow. When was that exactly? During the twenty-eighth century of the third age?_

He looked the curtains over one more time. They were old. Well cared for but old. They hadn’t hung over that doorway for their entire lifetime, he knew that. 

“My liege,” The girl next to him asked. “Would you like me to fetch you wine or food?”

It was startling how much he’d forgotten. 

“No,” Pallando replied. “Leave me.”

Pallando stretched, cracking his human back and watching the girl’s arse as she walked from his room, her clothes held in her arms. There was a circular brand on each of her cheeks. 

One of the Daughters of Berúthiel then. 

They must have come from one of their bases in the Orocarni to pay homage because he could smell the salt from the Sea of Rhûn even over the _fucking horrendous_ incense hovering in the air. 

He and Alatar had established themselves rather well with the Stonefoot dwarves, who were more than eager for aid blasting their way to the opals that were hidden along their coastline. They weren’t kept in the same luxury they had enjoyed when they had traveled with the nomadic Wainriders but those peoples had long since settled in cities and lost their wealth, their slaves and _his interest_ so Pallando couldn’t complain. He’d need to visit them, to talk to their Lords and to convince them not to join the Red Eye. 

He wondered what had become of their lands after he had fallen. 

_Interesting,_ He thought yet again. _I never heard anything in Eru’s song that would cause this._

The hymn marched ever on, never repeating a single melody. Unless Aüle and his Deathless dwarf fathers were involved but that grumpy smith didn’t have the power to do this. Even Örome or Manwë wouldn’t have this kind of power. 

Pallando got out of bed and scooped his robes up from the filthy rugs beneath his feet. Alatar only made him clean once every four weeks, or, rather, Alatar’s unwillingness to enter his bedroom made him clean the room once every four weeks. As Pallando pulled it on he noticed a broad scar across his chest. He’d been run through.

Pallando shuddered at the memory of the pain. 

He stopped thinking and looked about frantically, suddenly blinded by a single, all encompassing thought. 

“Alatar?” He croaked. He rushed out of his room, barefoot and lifting his robes as he did so. 

“Alatar?!” He shouted. There was no reply. 

Pallando sprinted into the hallway outside his room. 

_Left or right?_ He wondered. _Right. He slept on the right._

Alatar had always slept on the left of their bed, when they shared one that was. 

Pallando threw open the doors to his lover’s room with a bang and stormed in. He found Alatar sprawled out, naked on the floor, next to two handsome young dwarves. The brown bearded man had always had a taste for the little folk. 

How Alatar had leered at the little Gundabad Queen had never failed to amuse him. The other Istari had not been foolhardy enough to even try to woo that mad cunt, thankfully, so the two maia had survived their encounters with her. 

“Out!” Pallando shouted, nudging the dark skinned one with his foot. “Now!”

They scrambled up, far too slowly for Pallando’s tastes. Alatar groaned and blinked up at him.

“Wha’ do ya wan’?” The other Istari asked. Pallando stared down at Alatar’s dark cheeks; his large, sleepy black eyes and straight nose. 

That nose had been crushed by a mace. 

“Pallando?”

_He was fighting with his back to the wall, axe swinging in a wide arc in front of him. The Uruk-hai was still advancing, darting around his blows with the speed of the dead. Pallando snarled at it as it sprung forward, it’s blade coming within inches of his neck before he blocked it. The beast wrenched his axe from his hand, sending it clattering to the floor._

_Pallando blocked the next strike with his Yatagan and shoved the infernal thing away, right into the line of a bolas that wrapped around its legs and brought it stumbling to the ground. Pallando leapt forward and drove his blade down. The Uruk-hai deflected and stabbed a knife into his thigh._

_Pallando stabbed the wretched creature in the face and watched as it crumpled into oblivion._

_There was a scream from beside him. He turned in time to see Alatar falling back, a great orc swinging his mace at the Istari. Pallando rushed toward him, his injured leg barely able to hold his weight. A goblin sprung into his way._

_The orc brought his mace on his beloved_ _Alatar’s head. Pallando watched, helpless, as his lifelong companion; his lover; his_ partner _; as Alatar’s_ _skull was shattered with a sickening crunch, bone, brains and spilling and splattering on the cursed ground of Minas Morgul._

_The goblin in front of him drove it’s blade through his blade through Pallando’s chest._

“Alatar.” Pallando whispered as he knelt next to his lover. Alatar scrambled up and cupped his cheeks, staring into his eyes. Pallando felt the pressure of the other Istari’s mind against his own and allowed him in. 

Alatar began his examination slowly but sped up quickly until his rushing through Pallando’s memories. The war tearing through the Rhûn; the destruction of their Daughters, their Long Walkers and their Blessed Sons; their arrival in Gondor alongside the Umbar Oliphant riders. The heir of Isildur, the Everstar, bodies of Elves and Men piled in pyres so high that the fires could be seen from miles away. The battles for Osgiliath, Sauron’s promises, Saruman’s body hacked to pieces, that half mad little hobbit Queen with two rings of power around her neck. Alatar’s body lying limp beneath the horrible orc.

“Pallando,” The other Istari whispered, looking at him with wide, sad eyes. 

“I lost you,” Pallando choked out. “I…”

Alatar dragged him forward and kissed him desperately.

* * *

Olenna Baggins arrived in Bree an hour after sunset. She was exhausted and sweat soaked with her stomach, so unused to any form of hardship, roared for food. It would take four or five days for her body to adjust to rations. It had taken two months before her _mind_ had adjusted to the rations on the Quest.

 _Chit,_ Olenna thought as she walked through the muddy roads of the town. _Silly, spoiled chit._

No. 

_That’s not quite fair. I had no knowledge of what was to come. Good grief, I had no idea what was even going on at the time._

The only one on that Quest who had properly known all of the facts was Tharkûn. They’d be having words in eight days time. 

Oh, _yes_ , they would. 

The fire of Unrol-Eron-da-Nerroth crackled and popped in amusement. 

Olenna hummed slightly in agreement as she approached the Prancing Pony. It was surprisingly empty when she walked in. Only a dozen or so men lingering about the dining room and the bar. Most spoke in the local, heavy, loud, accent, drunkenly shouting over each other to be heard. Olenna looked the men over, noting their filthy hands, and clothes fleshly stained with splashes of beer. Cleary regular patrons. 

She wished she’d been able to purchase a cloak. A heavy, warm grey or green cloak like that of the Rangers of Gondor would serve her well for the coming adventure. That’s what she had thought she would call it after it was done; an adventure, a bit of excitement, a good tale to tell when she returned to Bag End. 

_Fool,_ Olenna thought. _In hindsight, yes but also no. My mother always came home to us after all._

She lived in a world with growing shadows not encroaching darkness. 

“This is not good.” Olenna murmured to Unrol-Eron-da-Nerroth. “Not good at all.”

She walked up to the counter and knocked on its side. The proprietor was there in less than a moment, peering down at her with a broad smile.

“Hello little Mistress, how may I help you this fine evening?” She asked. 

“I’d like a bed, an ale and a warm meal if you’ve still got soup in the pot.” Olenna responded. 

“Of course little Mistress,” The human replied. “Can I have your name?”

“Baggins,” Olenna replied. “Olenna Baggins of the Shire.”

 _Let it be known,_ She thought. _Mad, mad, Mistress Baggins._

 _Boggins,_ She remembered. _Kíli called her Boggins until they arrived at Beorn’s house._

She missed her little twerp of an agnâtkharm. 

Olenna handed over her coins and was led upstairs to a completely empty hobbit size room. She was somewhat surprised. There ought to be a tobacco merchant or two from Tuckborough or even a farmer bringing excess goods to the town. Word of troubled trade would not have reached Olenna for several weeks, if at all, should she not have traveled to Bree. 

She would have appreciated- _did appreciate-_ the quiet, comfortable night that the empty beds surrounding her promised yet she knew she would not sleep at ease. 

There was an old Dúnedain saying that Olenna had only heard once, from a haggard man that had followed Aragorn to Gondor, only to die of a fever or a cold. Olenna did not know. In fact, he found she could not even remember his name nor conjure his face from the depths of her memory. 

_“Utter silence is more dangerous than the sound of screaming.” He told Faramir. The ginger haired man had lapped it up like the eager young gondorian ranger he was._

_“Why?” Olenna asked, piling her plate with the first tomatoes she had seen in the past ten or so months._

_“If there’s screaming you know where the predator is,” The man had grinned down at her. “If there’s silence you don’t even know whether you’re being hunted or if you’re the hunter.”_

Olenna was of the opinion that that ought not solely apply to the untamed places of the world

The last time around the Company of Thorin Oakenshield had been hunted from the moment they left the Shire or, at least, that’s what Thorin, Gandalf and the rest had thought. Olenna was beginning to worry they may have been marked as prey well before that.

 _What in the name of Sauron’s taint were we doing?_ Olenna thought. 

_No_ , She reminded herself. _There is no way you could have known. We should have been warned. In Rivendell or by Gandalf who had suspected but kept his mouth firmly shut._

The White Council had suspected. 

_Mahal Wept, the Necromancer should have been chased from Dol Guldur a thousand years ago._

_But where would he have gone then?_

Olenna locked her pack in the safe hidden behind the headboard of her bed and walked down the stairs, back to the bar. Not for the first time but, certainly, for the first time in years, she wondered what would have happened if she hadn’t run out of her door after those dwarves.

_Thank Aüle, Eru, Yavanna and Gandalf that I did._

The proprietor brought her a lukewarm bowl of soup which Olenna ate slowly, her stomach grumbling in pain after every bite, having spent the day as hollow as a drum. 

_You’re going to be near empty every day, soon enough. Get used to it._

After she finished, Olenna buried herself into a corner with her half pint, looking over the inn with two sharp eyes. There wasn’t one single of the Dúnedain in sight. Olenna could overlook them easily enough, just as every other being on Middle Earth could, even elves. They had learned the wild by making it their home as refugees hiding from the Nazgul during the Witch King’s destruction of the Arnorian kingdoms. And then it became their only home. In a way this made the lack of a Dúnedain in the Prancing Pony less surprising than the utter emptiness of the inn yet she found it to be twice as worrisome. 

The Dunédain always tried to stay in Bree whenever they were close to the Shire. It was the same with Rivendale. Their homes were buried in the deepest parts of the wild, so far away from both the elves and the hobbits, that it would normally have been months since they had seen a proper bed and would be months before they saw one again. That, of course, depended on what route they took through Eriador. 

Olenna remembered how they refused to call their homeland Arnor until Aragorn was crowned king. 

For Bree to be completely sans a Dúnedain, the wild must be overrun or Olenna had just had the bad luck to arrive just after one had paid his due and left. Olenna did believe in luck but she didn’t think it had caused the emptiness of the space around her. 

“Not good,” She murmured to the ring around her neck. The miner’s songs that Unrol-Eron-da-Nerroth was so fond of singing turned somber and slow. 

She recognized the tune. It was from Belegost.

* * *

The rain was pouring down over Belegost. Fili pulled his hood over his head as he darted out of his mother’s door and into the alley behind their house. Kìli followed quickly, stomping in every single puddle as he went. Fíli watched his brother, curiously but refrained from commenting. He rarely begrudged his nadadith his fun. 

_We’re going to be late anyways._

Balin had called a meeting for two hours after sunset when the alleys and roads were only illuminated by a few crystals that hung over the occasional doorway and the lightning cracking overhead. Fíli knew the way to Balin’s house better than he knew the way to the forge or the training ground and he walked to and from the latter two every single day.

There was something about being herded through the alleys, carrying his wailing little brother in his arms, as a starving mob roared not two streets away. That had just been one nightmarish winter among many. 

“Isn’t his house down this way?” Kíli asked. Fíli looked back at his brother. Kíli had wet strands of hair hanging loose around his face and his hood pulled back, exposing his face to the wind and the rain. 

“No,” Fíli replied. “Come on.”

The two Princes were, indeed, rather late to the meeting. Their hoods were the last of twelve to hang on the pegs by Balin’s door. Kíli wiped his boots against the small ledge by the door and bounded down the hall toward the sounds of dinner and laughter. Fíli ran his fingers over his mustache before looking at Balin, who had just finished locking the four locks on his door. 

“I am sorry,” He told the older dwarf. “We had some final commissions to finish.”

“You still have time, laddie,” Balin replied. “But it’s no matter.”

_No, we don’t. There’s little time left for anything._

“You still have my apologies, Balin,” Fíli said, bobbing his head in thanks.

He followed the shorter dwarrow to his dining room and looked over the motley company of dwarves seated around the table. Fíli took his seat at the back of the room and listened. 

Dori, the tailor, was arguing with his thief of a brother, faces inches away from each other. Their little brother was quietly slipping away, trying to get to the kitchen. Fíli fought back a scowl at the sight of his badly clipped beard. 

_I ought to be thankful for such loyalty._

Thorin had been more grateful than Fíli had ever seen him when the _child_ had clipped it. Fíli’s gut boiled at the memory. 

_“And the Brother’s Rí?” He’d asked Thorin five or so months ago. They’d been in the forge, working on an order for a Broadbeam caravan that would be on it’s way to the Iron Hills sometime during the following two weeks._

_“Does it come as a surprise to you?” Thorin had replied._

_“I’d expected Nori but not the other two,” Fíli had said. Thorin looked up from the knife he was sharpening._

_“Why?” He had asked. Fíli recognized his uncle’s tone instantly as the one he used when there was some lesson to be used._

_“Ori’s a child,” Fíli reminded his uncle. “Dori might be the strongest dwarf in the entirety of Belegost but he hasn’t wielded anything more than scissors since before Kíli was born.”_

_He knew better than to even say the name, Azanulbizar unless Thorin spoke of the battle first and, even then, it was best not to ask questions._

_“Ori is older than your brother.” Thorin grunted and returned to sharpening the knife, indicating the conversation was done._

Kíli hasn’t been a child since he turned thirty and we took him with the caravans.

_Fíli knew better than to say that. He knew better than to hate his uncle for that._

“Ori!” Dori barked at his brother and started fussing, rushing him back into his seat next to an amused looking Nori. Balin’s apprentice hadn’t even left the Blue Mountains before.

_Has he even left Belegost?_

“Aye, laddie,” Dwalin took the seat next to him. “Is yer dam coming?”

_A polite way of asking if she was still sober._

“No,” Fíli replied. “She’s got something to finish up for the Artisans’ Guild.”

_She’s sitting by the fire, halfway through her second bottle and worrying about Mahal knows what now._

“Here, here!” Balin called, standing at the front of the table. The rabble fell into order and quieted. Fíli looked and saw that his brother was leaning against the wall, arms and ankles crossed. Kíli looked away from him quickly, jaw tightening, his body all but humming with energy. He had been staring. 

“I call forth this final meeting of the Company of Thorin Oakenshield on the nineteenth of April in the thousandth-nine-hundred-and-forty-first year of the Third Age.” Balin said. “In lieu of the presence of Thorin, son of Thraîn, son of Thror, I will head final preparations alongside Fíli, Heir of Erebor.”

Fíli nodded curtly but remained somewhat relaxed in his chair. 

_It would do no good to look like an eager child._

“The provisions are where we’ll begin,” Balin announced. As if an actor in a play, Ori shuffled forward and handed a paper to his Master. Balin thanked and smiled at his young Apprentice. Fíli watched Nori pick Dori’s purse from off the back of his belt and put another one in its place. 

“We need more.” Kíli chimed in. Fíli fought to keep a look of surprise off his face.

_He’s not wrong._

“Why would you think that, laddie?” Gloin asked. “We’ve got enough for six months and a bit, perhaps seven if we tighten our belts.”

“We’ve also got two pack ponies and we’ll lose half of our supplies if one runs off,” Kíli replied. “I won’t be able to hunt enough to make up for it. We’d have to make another stop. Something we can’t afford to do.”

“I suppose you’ll pay for it then?” Balin inquired. 

“Cram’s cheap,” Kíli argued. That made Fíli’s eyebrows climb up his forehead. 

_You almost cried the one time you had to eat the stuff._

He grinned in amusement and winked at his brother when Kíli glanced over at him. Kíli’s eyes darkened and he glanced away. 

_Have_ I _done something?_

“I can’t cook a thing with cram, laddie!” Bombur protested. And with that the dwarves were off, bickering amongst themselves. Fíli looked around the room yet again, watching Bifur sign rapidly at his red haired brother-i _n support of Kíli_ -while Nori argued shouted against the proposal with all his might. 

The Rí brothers’ clothes were impeccable.

_A tailor will have some use, even I’ve got to admit that. And Nori’s a filthy, awful, monstrous genius who could probably have pinched our funds right out from under our banker’s nose._

Though, Gloin probably counted his coffers twice a day. 

“Atkât!” Dwalin bellowed, slamming his fist on the table in an excellent pantomime of Thorin. Thorin probably would have let them argue for another half an hour to enhance the _drama._

_He truly would have made a wonderful actor._

The Company fell silent.

“Shall we put it to a vote?” Fíli asked, voice mild. He uncrossed his arms and smiled benevolently.

“Aye!” Kíli said. “A vote!”

His brother’s voice seemed to have deepened since yesterday. Fíli unashamedly started him for a moment only to have Kíli lift his chin up, cross his arms over his chest and hold his gaze. There was stubborn gleam in his eyes that Fíli knew meant trouble. 

Not the good kind that resulted in the brothers hiding from their mother’s switch, in the attic or in the tavern but the kind that saw them being sat down in Thorin’s office and shouted at for an evening. That was much worse than the switch.

Or they would be quickly pulled to the side by the scruffs of their necks and reminded of their duties. 

Fíli voted alongside his brother, knowing well enough that his belly was uncultured enough to stand for a mouthful of cram. He winked, teasing Kíli as he did so, trying not to chuckle at his brothers affronted look. 

_You’ll be crying in no time,_ _nadadith,_ Fíli thought. 

“I’ll need more supplies as well,” Oín announced loudly. “I can make a poultice out of anything but I can’t weave a bandage or thread on the road.”

“Can you dry them in one night?” Kíli piped up, yet again.

Fíli knitted his eyebrows together and began to bounce his right leg up and down nervously. He put his hand on his knee, a trick he’d learned as a nidoy to get it to stop. 

“Aye,” Oín grumbled. “Aye, I can laddie. Don’t you worry about that.”

“Even by a low fire?” Kíli asked, looking down at his shoes.

“Oi!” Gloin shouted. “What do you know of herbs? Other than the ones you smoke?”

The Company roared with laughter, all having heard of Kíli taste in unconventional herbs. 

_That’s what you get for eating those mushrooms._

* * *

Olenna Baggins had packed nearly seventy Shire pounds in her bag, weighing it down significantly. She spent every copper of it on weapons. 

“Two swords? Five knives? Eight days?” The smith asked in disgust. “Absolutely not. I’d have to push back a dozen orders. I can get you the knives today, miss, but the swords…”

“How much will it cost?” Olenna inquired bluntly.

“One hundred of your pounds.” The smith responded. He seemed to straighten up as if he were expecting an extended negotiation. Olenna did not give him one.

“Done.” Olenna said. “I can give you fifty five now and the rest when they’re done.”

She watched as the man struggled to keep his jaw off his chest. 

_It’s probably more than he makes in a year._

It was what Olenna made in four months from her tenants. It was a fraction of the wealth she’d had had at her fingertips. It would be a drop in a bucket in Erebor. 

It wouldn’t feed an army for one single week.

_I’ll need a damn army a hundred thousand strong before winter rolls around._

That was unlikely to happen. She’d just have to make due to Dain, Bard, Thranduil and thirteen mildly suicidal darrows. 

_What the hell were you fools thinking, charging into the_ carnage _in only chainmail?_

Olenna had never asked them that. In fact, she hadn’t even thought to ask, not when Thorin’s body was lying, cold and unmoving, on a slab of stone. Not when she was the least bloodied of the bunch of them. Bombur and Gloin had needed canes to walk for months and the latter was told he would have need of one again as he aged. The Firebeard hadn’t lived long enough for that. Bifur’s axe had been torn out of his head by an elven healer after he’d been knocked unconscious during the fight. Bofur had lost one of his braids and an ear to the swing of an orc sword. 

He’d go on to lose his nose not a year later, followed by his life. 

“Done!” The smith announced, beaming from ear to ear. Olenna nodded her head sharply at the human. “I can’t make you matching blades by I can shorten two of the ones I’ve already got made.”

“As long as they had the same grip and the same balance.” Olenna informed him. 

“Of course, of course.” He replied, eager for his coin

Olenna handed over the money without a second thought nor a smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In regards to the Blue Wizards Tolkien wrote, in letter 211, that he “feared they failed, as Saruman did” and that he “suspected that they were founders or beginners of secret cults and 'magic' traditions that outlasted the fall of Sauron” but he later wrote in “The Peoples of Middle Earth” that they didn’t fall to Sauron and were probably had a huge influence on the outcome of LOTR (The One Wiki to Rule Them All and Tolkien Gateway (which I find is better for lore not directly from LOTR/the Hobbit/the Silmarillion). Honestly, why not both?
> 
> Orcarni-Red Mountains. Mountain range in Rhûn  
> Daughters of Berúthiel-  
> Berúthiel was a Black Númenórian who married a (thoroughly less interesting than her) King of Gondor in the early Third Age. She was eventually exiled by her husband and returned to her homeland though we don’t actually know where that was. Given she was a reported magic user (either all around cat lady or cat torturer (I’m going with the former)), she likely had a cult or two founded in her honor or founded a few herself hence the Daughters of Berúthiel.  
> Agnâtkharm- brother-in-law. I used a translation found on iselnthatur on wordpress that states “agnâtnadad” is the regular translation but “agnâtkharm” is the word used in the dialect spoken in Erebor.  
> Atkât-silence  
> Nadadith-little brother  
> Nidoy-boy
> 
> HEY,HEY! SO NOW THAT I HAVE your attention I'd just like to ask your thoughts on Fíli's character within the Hobbit movies/books/the fic. Seriously, he's a nightmare to write and given he's going to be one of the most important characters in this the story any feedback is sorely needed. Thank you!!!!
> 
> Comments are my caffeine so let me know what you think!


	3. To Eryn Galen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She swore to Vairë then, that even if the fires of Mount Doom took her with them, the last Úlairi would die by her hand. 

Mrs. Lobelia Sackville-Baggins lived in a smial that was not a five minute walk away from Bag-End. A rather inconvenient fact that Olenna had inconveniently forgotten. She had also failed to remember that both the path she had run to market on and the path she ran from Bree on passed by Lobelia’s house. In fact, she failed to even recognize Lobelia when she appeared at Olenna’s doorstep.

In Ms. Baggins’ defense, Lobelia had forgotten to put on one of her expensive hats. 

_ I’ve worn mithril, gold, ruby, sapphire, opals from the far east, pearls from Dol Amroth. I’ve lace brought in bulk from the Shire for bed curtains in my nursery. I’ve had gardens built and rebuilt with a simple flourish of a pen. Everything that glittered and gleamed under that mountain had been…..thank you Unrol-Eron-da-Nerroth. _

The ring hummed grumpily at her. 

_ Your beloved gold did nothing to save us when Sauron came.  _ Olenna reminded her friend. 

The point was, Olenna had never seen anything as gaudy as Lobelia’s hats. The younger hobbit had even worn a hat covered in little pink flowers as she torched her smial, slaughtering the orc captains within, or so the tale was told. Lobelia had still been wearing that same hat when Olenna last saw her, racing past the Barrow-downs en route to Rohan, only to find her kinsman in the middle of some grave robbing. 

_ “Well,” Lobelia said, tucking a wisp of her grey hair behind her ear. “I suppose that’s that.” _

_ “I shan’t say I’ll miss you,” Olenna replied with a soft smile. “But your company’s been more of a pleasure than the last time we met.” _

_ “I am always a pleasure, Cousin,” Lobelia snapped back, lifting her chin to look up her nose at the slightly taller hobbit before her. “You’ve only just developed some taste.”  _

That was how Olenna remembered her; as a stern mouthed woman, steady as an oak tree, holding a walking stick and covered in ash. A queen’s ransom of grave goods had been laid at her feet, the afternoon sun baking the morgul curses off the glinting gold. 

“Well, I never,”  _ This  _ Lobelia began once Olenna had opened her door. “A Baggins rushing through the Shire like a possessed hare!”

She made to stomp into Bag End but Olenna shuffled to the side and blocked her.

“Hello Lobelia,” She said. “Lovely weather we’re having isn’t it?”

“Yes, yes,” Lobelia replied. “Aren’t you going to invite me in for tea?”

“No,” Olenna said flatly. 

She shut the door in her cousin’s face, feeling none of the satisfaction she had expected. 

_ Mahal,  _ She thought.  _ I forgot. The Barrow-wights. _

_ Unrol-Eron-da-Nerroth  _ rumbled, a thoroughly dwarven sound she’d never uttered by neither elves nor orcs nor men. Olenna had once told Ori that she thought it was like the purr of a cat, given how it seemed to come from his chest. Ori’s face had gone as red as Old Orgulas Brandybuck’s oversized, champion tomatoes. Fíli had smirked like a cat when she’d mentioned it to him, pulled her onto his sweaty, furry chest and proceeded to rumble until she wriggled from his grasp and got her legs around his head. 

_ None of that now, thank you very much. _

* * *

_ November TA 2940 _

_ Sauron’s time is coming. They do not expect him. _

_ He does not expect me.  _

Tauriel, Captain of the Forest Guard, wrapped in her winter cloak, was waiting for a wizard outside of something that was little better than a ruin, her blade laying across her lap. The Istari lived on the edge of the Grey Mountains, an entire forest guarded by elves away from the Necromancer. Still, the elf maid kept her blade unsheathed, ready for an attack. 

_ It will touch him soon, if it has not already.  _

November had come hard to Eryn Galen, freezing even the spiders in their hideous nests. It had made hunting them all the more easier. She knew they would return ten-fold by next autumn, bred in the pits beneath Dol Guldur and unleashed after they had made fat and vicious off orc flesh. The she-elf had seen firsthand how that  Maia abomination  bred them after Dol Guldur fell for the first time.

During the years she had been stationed outside of that place she had not slept often. Dreams had haunted her mind even during the daytime, twisting her sight until she saw phantoms crawling out the corners of her vision but when she turned, bow drawn, they disappeared. 

She had not been the only one.

They had only gotten worse after they’d managed to clear those terrible, filthy nests. 

Tauriel reached from the sheith laying next to her, over one of the many cracks on the step to the wizard’s house. She pulled the wet stone out from it’s little pocket and rubbed her fingers over the carving on it’s back. 

The smooth rock around the lettering was dull and worn from her touch, just as she remembered it last she had held it. There were thirty odd scratches maring the stone’s body. It had not had those marks when she’d first held it or, rather, when she’d kept it from falling down into the chasm that her people had built their prison around. 

She remembered that moment very well for Tauriel had a particularly exceptional memory even amongst the firstborn of Eru Iluvatar, who’s minds were made to withstand eons of life.

_ A talisman,  _ Tauriel smiled at the thought.  _ Indeed it was. With no particular spell. _

_ I could have anything down my trousers.  _

How hopeful his face had been. Tauriel snorted and turned her eyes up to the grey sky, shaking her head back and forth. That had been a warning of the kind of wooing she had been in for.

One she  _ thoroughly  _ enjoyed. 

The silvan elf tossed her little cursed talisman high up into the air over her head. It caught one of the few little beams of sunlight filtering through the clouds and glinted for nought but a second before it fell back into her open palm. 

Tauriel curled her fingers around the living stone, feeling it’s warmth flow up her arm and looked up to see a tall figure walking hurriedly through the trees. She grabbed the hilt of her sword and kept her eyes fixed on the wizard strolling easily toward her. Tauriel could make out two birds fluttering about his head and the wild gesturing of his free hand. 

_ You never changed a bit, did you?  _

She narrowed her eye and saw that he was holding a pipe in his free hand. As he moved ever closer the smoke rings he was blowing came into focus. Radagast was blowing two, maybe three in a row, telling the birds barrel roll between them, competing to dive through each and every ring. 

The sight made the she-elf’s chest tighten and a sad smile crawled up onto her face. Radagast’s birds would be with him until he fell and even after they had not gone far, simply hovering on the battlefield.

_ I don’t think they ever actually left.  _

She wondered if they were the same birds.

_ Radagast the Necromancer, Lord of the Greenwood. _

The thought of the seemingly harmless man leading a legion of immortal, half-dead animals into that infernal, blood stained pit that was  **Khazad-dûm** made her snort. The idea of orcs being devoured by enraged little blue birds uttering shrill war cries was rather ridiculous. 

They were more likely to sing after all. 

Tauriel hadn’t heard bird song since she’d awoken with Orcrist at her side and raced through the forest to find the wizard’s dilapidated house. It would have likely still been standing when Olenna leapt into that volcano, if it had not completely collapsed on itself. 

_ Tauriel saw only a flash of her black cloak as she fell yet she did not pause, ducking back to avoid one whistling blade as it was swung at her face. She heard the  _ _ Úlairi behind her move to strike her back, the sound of its cloak moving with its body. She  _ _ blocked the strike with the dull side of her sword, switching her grip into her left hand to push the sword away from her. It was barely enough, as the two in front of her lunged. Tauriel swung Glamrung in a mighty arc around her body, twirling the great Gondolindrim blade like a dwarf would. _

_ There was a great rumble beneath her feet, the mountain starting the quake as it awoke from its millennium long slumber.  _

_ Death was coming. Tauriel knew that. Olenna was already gone.  _

_ The Nazgul knew the patterns of her blade all too well. They drew closer rather than being driven back, swords and morgul knives aimed for the gaps in her defense. Tauriel’s face twisted into a foul sneer when one strike glanced off her bewitched mithril breastplate. The she-elf caught the arm of her foe and buried her heel into its belly. She spun away from the wraith, forcing it’s companions away before she turned back and beheaded the first wraith. _

_ She swore to  _ _ Vairë  _ _ then, that even if the fires of Mount Doom took her with them, the last Úlairi would die by her hand.  _

It was the last thing she had ever done. 

Radagast’s singing reached her elven ears, shaking her from her grim thoughts. It was more a slow, sluggish, drugged chant of sounds than a language elven ears but here or there she could make out a repeating groan of ecstasy. Perhaps it was one so old that there were none living other than he who remembered it. Tauriel leaned back as the wizard got closer. She could pick out the moment he actually saw her. He didn’t stop but his step faltered and he tilted up his pointed hat. 

Tauriel lifted her hand up and wriggled her fingers in greeting. She was no enemy, in fact, she was nothing more than a yet unmet friend and would act as such. 

_ Sauron’s time is coming. They must be warned. We must be ready.  _ Tauriel thought, a wave of panic washing over her.  _ He was my friend. He is my friend _

The Istari was waving back with his pipe hand and saying something to his birds when she recovered herself. They flew above the trees, into the clouds, clearly on his orders. Tauriel crossed her legs at the ankle and slid Orcrist into her sheath. She flexed her palm over the leather grip she had cut from a spare belt, concealing the dragon bone hilt of the Gondolindrim blade. Gothrim had always been able to sense it when it was bared to the world, making hiding the hilt of her sword and casting aside it’s first sheath a necessity.

Radagast’s birds dove down from above her and alighted on the roof behind her, peering down in a manner that showed them to be little better than smaller versions of the Ravens of the North who had served her line so well.

_ Would serve her line so well in the coming decade. _

But it was not Tauriel’s line. 

_ Not yet at least.  _

The she-elf tossed her stone back up into the air, watching it twist, dull and dark for the sun had fallen behind a dark cloud. Tauriel scowled up at her, knowing well that the home of her birth would be shrouded in darkness. One of the birds dove down, pulling her gaze from her runestone and she fumbled to catch it, stone bouncing off her palm and falling down to her lap before she managed to catch it. 

The one blue bird flapped his wings and hovered in front of her for two long minutes. Tauriel cocked her head to the side, mouth pulling up into something resembling a grin.

“Hello there,” Tauriel said to the little bird. “Are you going to invite me in?”

The bird chirped in offense and then flew back to the Istari who was not forty paces away from her. She could hear the bird saying something to Radagast and saw the man bob his bearded head. He hurried towards her but stopped, his mouth falling open when he was fifteen paces away. 

_ Yes,  _ Tauriel thought.  _ This is my face. Thank you. _

“What on this good earth happened to you?!” The wizard squaked. 

“Good morning to you too, Radagast,” Tauriel replied, displaying the  _ excellent _ manners she had learned from Olenna. 

The Istaris never failed to drive her sister to fits of sarcastic, infuriated hobbit-rage. If the two Blue ones hadn’t been smart enough to have their heads bashed in Olenna probably would have done it for them. 

_ Radagast had been the Queen’s favorite.  _

“We haven’t met,” The wizard replied, bushy brows knitting together in confusion. 

“You don’t need to have met someone to know who they are.” Tauriel said. Radagast humphed and dropped down next to her, laying his staff between the two of them. 

“You’ve met me,” Radagast replied. Tauriel turned her head around so she could see him properly with her good eye. He was looking straight ahead, mouth tight with worry beneath his beard. 

“So I have,” Tauriel admitted. “So I have.”

They sat in a tense silence until the second of Radagast’s birds dove down from the room and the wizard lifted his hat to let the bird join its mate in its nest. He dropped the hat back on top of his head but left his hand in the air, fingers flexing around nothing. Then he rubbed the tip of his hat and began to hum. 

“Do you still have that hedgehog?” Tauriel asked.

“Yes, he’s inside,” Radagast replied. He made no move to get up and guide her in. Tauriel sat next to him, as still as stone, watching his eyes crawl over her face, looking for something.

“I never took you for a gawker,” Tauriel said, raising her eyebrow at him. She’d known far too many of those over the last fifteen years. 

Men did have a habit of staring at things they deemed curiosities and she’d kept company with them more often than not during the war. Dwarves too, though she supposed they’d been staring at her long before she’d gotten her scars. 

_ They no longer existed,  _ Tauriel thought.  _ Most haven’t even been born yet.  _

“It takes a foe of great power to inflict such a lasting wound on an elf.” Radagast murmured. Tauriel flinched and her hand’s curled into fists. 

“It had greater power than anything you’ve seen since the War of the Wrath.” Tauriel replied. “Other than the Eye but from what I’ve heard he’s been destroyed, hasn’t he?”

“What had a morgul blade?” Radagast asked. Tauriel reeled back and her mouth dropped open in shock. 

_ What valinorian trick is this?  _ She thought, her hands reaching to her belly on instinct. The old wound just beneath her ribs throbbed and Tauriel felt ice creep through her abdomen, reaching up, trying to pull the air from her lungs. 

“I can taste it in the air.” Radagast hummed. “It makes everything cold like a tomb. You’re half dead when a morgul blade touches you.”

“I know,” Tauriel replied and put one hand on her knee, sucking in a breath of air through her teeth. She lifted her other hand to touch the matted scars on her chin. 

“Dragon fire, though,” The wizard chided. “You must be mad to have gone looking for one of those old drakes.”

“I’m just as sane as you are,” Tauriel snorted. Radagast pouted at her before brightening up and clapping his hands together. 

“Oh, I think Sebastian will like you.” Radagast said. “Come, come, I’ve some tea and fresh herbs.” 

He hopped up and his staff seemed to jump into his palm, nearly smacking Tauriel in the head. She glared at the wizard and stood up slowly, her joints popping as she did. It was an uncomfortable sensation but to be expected. She’d been sitting for nearly five hours, afterall. Tauriel hooked Orcrist onto her belt and looked over the clearing, seeing only white, crisp snow on the ground. 

_ Beautiful,  _ She thought. It was truly beautiful; in fact she might even say that this little clearing was the prettiest part of the woods, even in the dead of winter. 

Tauriel turned and walked into the cottage but, even as her foot stepped through the doorway the sound of two crow calls cutting through the still air behind her. The she-elf whipped around, her hand snatching an arrow from it’s quiver as she pulled her bow from her shoulder. She knocked the arrow and her eye searched amongst the tops of the trees, only to see the two birds were far out of range, moving at such an unnatural speed that it made Tauriel’s heart drop in her stomach. 

_ Oromë have mercy _ , She prayed.  _ Say they were sent to watch the wizard.  _

A teapot smashed behind the she-elf but she did not turn to look. She watched the forest-suddenly deep, suddenly dark, suddenly cooing like some great, newly awoken _ beast- _ as she put her arrow away. Tauriel only turned her back to the woods when she slammed the door, her throat closing at the sight that awaited her. 

_ Vairë say I’ve come back alone,  _ Tauriel thought. 

Radagast was staring at her mildly, holding Sebastian in one hand and gently petting his head with the other.

“Lock the door please,” He said. Tauriel did, throwing the metal latch down with a satisfying clank. 

“I’m afraid you’re being hunted.” The wizard informed her flatly. 

“Yes,” Tauriel rasped out. “I am.”

“Good,” Radagast replied, gesturing wildly. “Come, come, sit!”

There were no chairs surrounding the rickety little table that was sitting in the center of the room, leaning to one side. Little bits of moss, fungus and  _ Oromë knew what  _ growing all over the table. Tauriel tapped her fingers on it’s edge, wondering if it would collapse when a teapot was set on top of it. 

_ I could use a good laugh. _

Tauriel stood and watched as the wizard bustled about a little, hobbitish stove. He pulled a little rusted can out from a drawer and struggled to yank off the lid, grunting as he did so. He shook himself and made a sound somewhere between a groan and a snarl, nodding his head to that dratted hedgehog. 

Sebastian was perched on the counter, beside the teapot, glaring at Tauriel. The she-elf lifted her nose in the air and glared back at the hedgehog. 

_ I would not be surprised if the prickly menace remembered me. _

Radagast dropped a pinch of the herbs into the mug and put it on the stove. 

_ More like a handful. _

Tauriel hoped there wasn’t anything particularly  _ strong  _ in the blend. She needed her wits about her for this. The she-elf took a deep breath in through the right side of her nose as the airway of her left nostril had been crushed by an orc boot long ago. 

_ Tauriel heard the whistle of the shell flying overhead. She bit her tongue and shut her eye, trying to ignore the pain reverberating down from her elven ears into her jaw.  _

_ “Get down!” _ _ Kíli screamed from two dozen feet away from her. Tauriel threw herself to the ground and clasped her hands over her ears. She still heard the blast of the shell exploding behind her. Tauriel looked up at the sky seeing smoke and dirt and fire flying a mile high into the air.  _

_ There was a beat of silence before the shockwave hit, booming and sending soldiers stumbling and a wave of dust through the air. Tauriel shut her eyes and curled in on herself, ears ringing. _

_ Someone was wailing nearby.  _

The unnaturally fast whistle of the teapot knocked the she-elf out of her memories. She took a deep breath, trying to calm her pounding heart. She flexed her fingers around the hilt of Orcrist and looked down. The she-elf had not even realised she had grabbed it. 

Tauriel had still been on the ground when the orcs and goblins had smashed into her phalanx.  __

“Now, you must tell me,” Radagast said as he set down his tea cup. “Exactly who the fuck are you?”

* * *

Fíli son of Víli sat up with his amad each night and helped her to bed when she had a bad one. He would always hustle Kíli to bed, promising to join him after a piss, knowing his brother would be asleep the moment his head touched the pillow. Fíli tied his hair up into a high, messy twist as he padded, nearly silently down the stairs in his socks. It was too cold to go barefoot high up in the mountain city he called home. 

Dís went to bed in her shoes when she was drunk as Fíli was unwilling to bare one inch of his  _ own mother’s _ body. He’d done a lot worse with dwarrowdams but he followed the old custom with Dís because, well, of course he did. 

“Amad?” Fíli asked as he walked into the kitchen. His mother was in her great chair, her head bowed, wrapped in a great, knitted shawl. Kneeling, barefoot at her feet, was Kíli. He had her bottle in one hand and the other on her knee. Fíli could hear his nadadith speaking softly but couldn’t make out the words. He strode up slowly, walking on the tips of his toes. Dís saw him almost immediately, eyes snapping up from Kíli and fixing on him despite sheen of the alcohol clouding them. 

“My dashshat,” She said softly. “Why are you here?”

“To sit with you namad,” Kíli replied. 

“Why?” She asked. “What do you want?”

Fíli flinched and hurried over. He put his hand on his brother’s shoulder and squeezed gently. Kíli glanced up at him. His lips were pressed together but his normally so expressive eyes were shuttered. 

_ What’s she done?  _ Fíli thought, suddenly furious. He swallowed the knot building in his chest and smiled gently down at his mother. 

“It’s late,” Fíli said, softly, as if he was speaking to a child. Dís and Thorin used to speak to him like that. They had stopped a long time ago. When he was young he had resented how their deep voices had pitched upward but now he missed it for their tones reminded him of when he was a child. “There is much to do tomorrow, we all need to rest.”

“Rest is for the dead and dying,” Dís replied but stood up from her chair. 

“Not always,” Kíli muttered, more to himself than anyone else. She stumbled forward but Kíli caught her around the waist. Fíli grasped her arm firmly and steadied her so Kíli could get up off his knees. He did gingerly. His brother had pulled his fine hair back into a simple braid. 

_ They look exhausted. _

They both had dark bags under their large dark eyes that looked like bruises set against their pale skin. He knew Kíli had slept well the past night, other than for two nightmares. Slowly but steadily, Fíli and Kíli helped their mother across the room and up the stairs. Dís stumbled less than she normally did but she also hadn’t had as much to drink. 

Dís’ room was the smallest in the house, just across from the office she and Thorin and occasionally Fíli shared. He’s spent more and more time inside of it since Thorin had left for the Iron Hills. 

Fíli doubted he’d be coming back with the promised army. He hadn’t told Kíli that.

_ “Do you think Thorin-little Thorin-will be coming with Dain?” Kíli asked him the day after Thorin left. The two brothers were walking side by side. Fíli was holding a brace of coneys and Kíli was swinging three quail back and forth in time with his steps. The autumn wind was cool on his cheeks; a warning of the harsh, storm filled winter to come.  _

_ “If Dain’s coming then probably not,” Fíli told him.  _

_ “He said he’s going to be getting his  _ _ mastery marks  _ _ early,” Kíli told him. “His mother has insisted on following Broadbeam traditions.”  _

_ Those folk named their _ _ sons and daughters  _ _ as dams and dwarrow when they turned forty-six rather than the fifty allowing them to begin their apprenticeships early. Little Thorin, who was both taller and older than Fíli, had already been a novice when he’d first met him nearly thirty years ago.  _

_ “About time,” Fíli grunted. “I say, whatever scribe apprenticed him let him go far too soon.” _

_ “He’d agree with you.” Kíli replied. “Even though he won’t admit it outright.” _

_ Belegost had loomed overhead, the flickering lights creeping through the windows of houses visible despite the light of the rising sun creeping through the clouds overhead.  _

That had been the last time the two had managed to make it out to the woods since Thorin left. 

_ We’ll go again when we return,  _ Fíli promised himself.  _ One last time, before we lead our people home.  _

“Where’s my cloak?” Dís asked suddenly, just as she clambered into bed. A gust of wind could be heard whistling through the cracks in the walls. Dís room didn’t have a window, thankfully. Even if it did, she was sober enough to not even think about trying to climb out of it. 

“In the closet?” Kíli replied. Fíli rubbed his mustache, knowing very well what she was going to say next. Dís tried to sit up but Fíli pulled her blankets over her, pushing her back into the mattress. 

“Fíli, get it.” She said. “I will sleep beside your father tonight.”

Fíli flinched and fought the urge to look at his younger brother.

_ Mahal fucking damn it, _ He thought.  _ Why the fuck did you have to say that? _

“You’d wake him, amad,” Kíli told her. “But he would be Víli no longer.”

This time, Fíli did look at his brother, head snapping around in shock. 

“You can dine with him in the morning,” Kíli reassured her. “Didn’t you tell me he loved your  bread ?”

“There’s no time to bake it,” Dís grunted and made to sit up. 

“We’ll get early and help you,” Fíli replied quickly. 

“It’s my duty,” Dís snapped. “I’m his wife.”

“We’re his sons, amad,” Fíli reminded her and Dís settled back onto her pillow with a scowl. Fíli kissed her head quickly, covered the sun-lamp beside her bed, grabbed Kíli by the arm and all but raced out the door.

_ I’ll hear her if she tries to slip out.  _ Fíli reminded himself. Dís was heavy footed and wore iron soled boots, just as they all did during the winter months. 

The two brothers stood in the hallway for a moment before Kíli put his hands on his hips, shook his head back and forth and gave a breathy laugh. Fíli ran his hand over his mustache yet again, fighting the urge to reach out and touch Kíli. He knew his nadadith wouldn’t appreciate it. 

“Even though his bones are still in his grave,” Kíli said. “Sometimes I wonder if your father is a draugr.”

“You can’t listen to her when she’s like this,” Fíli replied. His voice was high pitched with terror.  _ Mahal _ . 

“Drunks are the most honest folk you’ll ever meet.” Kíli shrugged. “Everyone talks about it. Why shouldn’t we?”

_ Fuck them _ , Fíli wanted to say.  _ Fuck them all. They’re wrong.  _

“Why should we?” Fíli replied and reached out to his brother, putting his hand on Kíli’s upper arm. “There’s no point in even acknowledging their lies.”

Kíli looked at him queerly for a moment, his brow knit together, his mouth downturned into a pout. 

“Kí…” Fíli began. Kíli pulled him into a hug, wrapping his long arms around Fíli and hauling the blond dwarf to his chest. 

_ Don’t you dare think it. Don’t even imagine that their lies are true. You’re Kíli son of Víli, Prince of Erebor, Son of the Line of Durin. You are my brother. _

Fíli blinked, startled and shivered, unaccustomed to such a touch. He wrapped his arms around Kíli’s broader chest and held him for a moment before he felt one of his brother’s large hands pat the top of his head.

“There, there nadadith,” Kíli said. “It’ll be alright.”

Fíli scowled into his brother’s chest, squinted, grinned and hugged him tighter. 

Then he kneed Kíli in the thigh.

Kíli hopped back with a yelp and curled in on himself. He looked up and scowled at Fíli, who smiled back innocently. Then his face melted and his brown eyes went big. 

_ Oh, no,  _ Fíli thought.  _ Mahal.  _

Then Kíli straightened up and grabbed Fíli again, hugging him frantically. Fíli blinked in confusion. He hugged him back and began to rub his back. 

_ What did you see Kí?  _ Fíli thought.  _ Could it have been a stone-dream? _

Kíli was not prone to outbursts of sorrow or grief. His brother had a bad temper but was quick to laugh and always eager from some mischief. 

_ Forge-blood,  _ Thorin grumbled about his brother much too often. 

_ Like Frerin,  _ Dís said when she was drunk. 

_ Like you,  _ Fíli had wanted to say when he was a child but, by then, he’d already known to stay silent. There was little point. It would have brought the wrong kind of trouble. 

“Sometimes…” Kíli sniffled. “Sometimes I think Víli’s become a draugr. Sometimes I think he’s rattling around all our heads, dancing like a drunken tavern wench.”

_ “ _ His tomb hasn’t cracked,” Fíli replied, heart freezing in chest. There had been too many opened graves during their youth, the dead seemingly clawing their way out to drag their living kin into the stone with them.

“Do you think she feels guilty?” Kíli asked him, as he pulled a rag out of his pocket. “For betraying him?”

“Kíli, our amad did nothing  _ wrong _ .” Fíli replied, grabbing his brother's shoulder and squeezing it. 

“I’m not saying she did.” Kíli blew his nose into the rag. 

_ Not in that way. She’d done plenty wrong sense but she hadn’t-had not-done  _ that. 

“Perhaps the draugr come in other forms that raise corpses.” Kíli suggested. 

_ Why would you think that? Who’s been bloody working their way into your head? _

“Best not try to wake the dead,” Fíli said, shaking his head. Kíli sniffled and wiped his nose on his rag rather than on his sleeve, as was his habit. 

“Some don’t ever sleep,” Kíli replied. 

“When did you become religious?” Fíli scoffed, shaking his golden head. Kíli grimaced and shoved his rag back in his pocket. 

“Who do you think my father is?” Kíli asked his brother.

_ A human, met at some tavern after the tidings of Thror’s death had come. Adad, Dwalin and Thorin had been gone with a caravan and my sigin’adad locked himself in his room for nearly two weeks.  _

_ She’d been alone, alone, alone with me, too little to understand and gripping at her skirts.. _

“Víli,” He lied. “You are Víli’s son. Who told you otherwise?”   
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Morgul-at its simplest is the Sindarin word for “Black Magic” which is how it’s being used in this chapter  
> Eryn Galen-Mirkwood  
> Eru Iluvatar- “the supreme deity of Arda.” Basically he created everything and then took a vacation until the Valar needed him to destroy Númenor (the Silmarillion) and causing Gollum to trip and fall into Mount Doom (one of Tolkein’s letters).   
> Vairë-the wife of Mandos. Her name literally means “weaver” or “ever weaving” in Quenya and she is, appropriately, responsible for weaving the history of Middle Earth into history.  
> Oromë- His full name is Oromë Aldaron. He’s called the Huntsman, the Lord of Forests, and the Great Rider so Tauriel referencing him is appropriate.  
> Dashat-sons
> 
> On Fíli and Kíli’s ages, according to LOTR Fandom Wiki, were born in TA 2859 and TA 2864 and Thror died in TA 2589 while the Quest for the Lonely Mountains was in TA 2941. Choosing such young actors to play them in the movies was a (an excellent, marvelous, wonderful choice) messy choice. The 1977 version of the Hobbit is much more accurate when it comes to the dwarves’ ages. They should have both (depending on how dwarves age developmentally) been able to remember the War of Dwarves and Orcs. Bumping down both of their ages is something a lot of us have to do in fanfiction and, yes, I made Kíli illegitimate. Honestly, if you’re going to make him look like a human I will take the liberty of writing him as a half-human. 
> 
> Draugr-basically norse zombies and likely the inspiration for White Walkers in ASOIAF. Given undead wraiths exist in Tolkein’s work and the Dwarven mythos in LOTR isn’t explored enough in my opinion. While I am aware that Tolkien based his dwarves heavily on anti-semetic stereotypes, I also know that there are some (minor) influences from Norse dwarves (who certainly share some of those stereotypes). There will absolutely be ties to Judaism within dwarven culture that will absolutely come up in future chapters but I decided to tie wraiths into dwarven burial practices so here we are.   
> EDIT: I may go over Tauriel’s part and elaborate more on her physical scars/partial blindness but I wanted to see how this version worked and give a better description later. 
> 
> Comments are my caffeine so let me know what you think!!!

**Author's Note:**

> Unrol-Eron-da-Nerroth - Stone of the Deep aka Durin’s ring  
> Vára Fraunana - Filthy coward in Quenya (Fraukank is coward in orcish which is derived from either Sindarian or Quenya so I modified it)  
> Úlairi - Ringwraiths in Quenya  
> Gwahil-Akvel akh id-Quin - Captain of the Queen's Guard in Khuzdul  
> Dûrgrimst Vrenshrrgn - Her Mastery was in combat (Direct translation: Dwarf Clan: Warriors)  
> Balchothi, Umbar, and Dorwinion - Lands of the Rhûn. Based on the names of the few named cultures/regions of the “Easterlings” that I could find on The One Wiki to Rule the All. Frankly, there is no way such a massive land mass doesn’t include peoples that would ally with the Gondorians et al. against Sauron.  
> Jiak liwo zorr lat - I will gut you in Orcish (I couldn’t find the translations in any other language. Also, I’m lazy.)  
> Dilann grjoul - Fat pig in Khuzdul.  
> Ongra- Please in Khuzdul.  
> Amad or Irak’nadad - Mother or Uncle in Khuzdul  
> Men andr torak - My soulmate


End file.
